Dell Reaffirms Commitment to Open Source, Developers at OSCON

Dell revealed that it will deliver a new developer-focused, Ubuntu-powered laptop as part of its Project Sputnik in the fall. Dell announced this and other open-source moves at the O Reilly Open Source Convention 2012 (OSCON).

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Dell has announced the expansion of three open-source software and cloud computing initiatives: the formalization of Project Sputnik resulting in a Dell product in the fall, its Dell's Emerging Solutions Ecosystem to include Pentaho and Datameer, and enhancements to Dell's OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution and the Dell Cloudera solution.

Dell officially launched Project Sputnik, which was initially designed as a six-month exploratory pilot to create an Ubuntu-based developer laptop. However, Dell is taking Project Sputnik from pilot to product this fall. At that time, the company plans to deliver an official developer laptop based on the Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu 12.04LTS preloaded, available in select geographies.

Made possible by an internal innovation fund, the system will offer developers a complete client-to-cloud solution. The included software will allow developers to create microclouds on their laptops, simulating a proper, at-scale environment, and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud.

Dell announced the official launch of Project Sputnik and its product plans at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) 2012 here. In an OSCON keynote, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, maker of Ubuntu, said, "Dell is going to start preinstalling Ubuntu in the American market on developer notebooks as part of Project Sputnik."

"Project Sputnik is a great example of the employee-driven innovation we built Dell's incubation program to enable," said Nnamdi Orakwue, executive sponsor of the Dell incubation program and executive assistant to Michael Dell, in a statement. "This project represents the first of many new ideas Dell employees will test with customers or partners through the program, and we look forward to supporting Sputnik to be successful as it becomes a product this fall."

"Since we announced project Sputnik a little over two months ago, we have continued to be amazed by the amount and quality of interest and input we have received," said Barton George, Project Sputnik lead and director Dell's Web vertical marketing, in a statement. "By listening to developers, Dell can provide them with solutions and products to help make them more productive and allow for greater innovation."